Spouses commonly enlist the assistance of a counselor when their marriage isn’t functioning well and is entrenched in maladaptive patterns. There are many possible reasons for this, including arrogance, jealousy, anger, poor communication or problem-solving, ill health, and third parties. Marriage counseling works with the couple-system and allows them to have a more objective view of their relationship, modify dysfunctional behavior, decrease emotional avoidance, improve communication, and promote their strengths.
Additionally, as intimacy deepens, each partner learns to take equal responsibility of future problems as they arise, becomes aware of their own contribution to the couple-system, and makes some fundamental changes in their beliefs, behaviors, and feelings. Marriages truly benefit when these gains are maintained over the long-term.
Emotion focused counseling can benefit healthy marriages as well as those in crisis, but most couples wait an average of six years from the first sign of problems to get help. Find out if marriage counseling is right for your relationship.
According to the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT), marriage counseling costs 20% less than a psychologist’s fees, and 30% less than a psychiatrist’s fees. In fact, it is shown that 2/3 of marriage counselors are willing to lower their rates! (Under certain criteria, marriage counseling may be covered under most health insurance policies.)
According to one study, just 3% of marriages divorced 4 years after completing insight-oriented marital therapy, and nearly one-third of marriages last after an affair has been admitted or discovered!
The median length of family therapy is just 12 sessions, and 65% of cases are completed within 20 sessions. In fact, family therapy generally lasts 30% fewer sessions than individual therapy.
About one half of all highly-distressed marriages in a 2011 study showed persistent signs of improvement 5 years later.
752,370
couples enter family therapy each year
3.4%
of households have seen a marriage and family therapist
21.5%
reduction in health care use as a result of family therapy
98.1%
rated services good or excellent
97.1%
got the kind of help they desired
91.2%
were satisfied with the amount of help they received
93%
said they helped in dealing more effectively with problems
96.9%
would recommend their therapist to a friend
94.3%
would return to the same therapist
97.4%
were generally satisfied with the service they received
We follow the best practices of the two most successful, results driven methods in marriage therapy to improve patient outcomes.
Science-based, goal oriented therapy is used to help marriages to: